🔒Attorney Gale pushes local, small business expansion

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John Q. Gale, 63, an attorney, landlord, entrepreneur, volunteer, and former electrical engineer, is looking for his next career change.

A married father of four, with his fourth grandchild on the way, Gale has set his sights on the city's top office, currently held by fellow attorney and Democrat Pedro E. Segarra, a man Gale describes as a friend, but someone who he said has not managed the city's affairs well.

Gale was born in Hartford and has lived here most of his life.

Fresh out of the University of Pennsylvania in 1973, where he marched in demonstrations against Richard Nixon's invasion of Cambodia, Gale worked two years at Fairfield conglomerate General Electric as an electrical engineer. But his focus soon turned to the law after being inspired by the Watergate hearings.

“Very quickly I realized that being an engineer was not really my calling in life,” Gale said in an interview in his Hartford office above Peppercorn's Grill on Main Street. “I was much more of a people person.”

He attended UConn School of Law and has been at his law firm since 1977. He also owns several office-retail and office-apartment properties in the city.

Along with partners, he founded and eventually sold Mo's Midtown diner and The Alley duckpin bowling alley in the late 1980s, and founded a Connecticut River entertainment cruise venture, Jambalaya on the River, which operated in the late 1990s and held a revival cruise in 2012.

He is on the executive board of the West End Civic Association, a member of the Hartford Democratic Town Committee, and involved with several area nonprofits and charitable groups.

How would you assess Hartford's current economy? What are your top two economic development initiatives to improve the city?

It's unfortunate that United Technologies [is leaving] Hartford. It's fortunate that they're still located across the river. We're also fortunate we have three major insurance companies located right within the city. We certainly have a very good economic foundation.

But while UTC and the insurance companies represent great economic drivers for our entire region, they're not a tremendous job creator for citizens in Hartford. We have some very difficult unemployment problems.

I want to take a look at iConnect [which subsidizes small business leases of vacant downtown storefronts] and see if we can expand that program to generate small businesses in our corridors. Move it down Albany Avenue, move it up North Main Street, move it up Wethersfield Avenue. In Hartford's case, the program [in which Gale's daughters' company Hartford Prints! is one of two remaining beneficiaries] got off the ground with a lot of fits and starts. There's no reason why this can't be done well.

I want to have local-hire requirements in our contracts. I'm somewhat mystified as to why many of the contracts the Metropolitan District Commission has put out are going to non-Connecticut contractors. In my neighborhood, it's been going on for three years with contractors from Ludlow, Mass.

What can be done to reduce the 74.29 mill property tax rate that businesses must pay?

To get the mill rate down, we've got to bring expenses down and bring taxable income up. I say we advance on all fronts. On the expense side, our government has to be more efficient. I've already announced that the first act I'd take as mayor is to require all department heads to reapply for their jobs.

On the revenue side, we have to put new properties on the tax rolls. We have to have improved relations between city hall and its state delegation so we can push for better PILOT [payment in lieu of taxes] reimbursement.

We have to improve the value of our neighborhoods so the value of all of our properties goes up. I want to do anti-blight programs, more vigorous street sweeping, and I'm proposing we triple the number of trees we're planting every year to 3,000. A 10 to 20 percent increase in value in some of these neighborhoods shouldn't be hard.

With multiple transportation projects in various stages of completion, what is your long-term plan for how people will move to, from, and around Hartford?

I-84, I'd love to see it buried. I don't know if that's economically feasible. I'd love to see it buried and potentially used as a bikeway into Hartford from the west. I want to make sure that the rail from New Haven to Hartford to Springfield takes place. We need it.

I'd like to see a rail connection to [Bradley International Airport]. CTfastrak, I think it is going to work. I would be in favor of the governor subsidizing ridership for a year, with no fares. I would like to see a rail shuttle from the University of Hartford to downtown. The Dash shuttle is a good idea. It probably needs to be expanded into two lines so we get more coverage downtown. We need bike lanes in as many places as possible and a bike-sharing program.

Assess the work of the Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA) so far, and how would you work with CRDA to further improve the city?

To the extent that CRDA has been a key player in developing housing downtown, I applaud all of its efforts because having a 24/7 residential population is something I've advocated for almost 20 years. We need to be building so we're able to capture that energy, capture that population.

The Hartford Office Supply building has to be done. I think it should have retail on the first floor, and every one of these projects must have affordable housing. The strength of neighborhoods has to be based on economic diversity of population.

What's your opinion of the Downtown North development, including the new baseball stadium?

I do think it will generate economic development. But the process itself, I feel, was flawed. Unfortunately, Hartford's footing the entire bill. I hope the legislature does provide us with a [ticket tax funding] mechanism, as I think it should.

Certainly the Downtown North area needs something. We have to encourage it, which may mean we have to provide some economic incentives to continue the development. That has to be peppered with prudence. We're looking for taxes, after all. I don't know if I could change anything at this point. I'd give up the city's luxury boxes.

What must Hartford do to attract more businesses?

We need infrastructure development downtown to attract young entrepreneurs. Transportation, mobility advancements, the rail, the bus will all help generate more business. A rail connection to Bradley would actually be a good generator for some of our convention business. We're sitting here in theoretically the most advanced nation in the world, and we don't have a rail connection to our airport?

We need to build out some of our industrial spaces. There are large tracts of industrial land on Windsor Street. I would look to utilize incentives to bring in new business. I would triage the inventory of vacant properties that Hartford owns with the goal of seeing which could immediately be put into the hands of anybody with a plan to develop them.

What should happen with the XL Center?

Long term, I see the XL Center staying put. I would certainly be in favor of proposals to expand it somewhat to be able to attract bigger entertainment options.

My primary focus is having the XL Center filled as often as possible and having it communicate with the streets around it.

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